Social Media and Online Community Posts From Around The Web

Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is a breakdown on why it’s important to see each platform as independent; why brands are key to Facebook’s success; principles to follow when building Facebook Landing Tabs; best practice for diversifying a Facebook campaign; and why it’s best to focus on a narrowly defined audience in an online community.

No matter the communication tool in your toolbox, if you use it to do something it’s not good at, you’re signing up for poor results and lots of frustration. Want to make a closer connection to your customers? Broadcast advertising ain’t gonna cut it. Want to provide a talk-able ‘mobile experience’? There’s a good chance just slapping a QR code on every product or advertisement you produce isn’t going to garner the type of interaction you want.

As it develops, Facebook will look to depend more on locking people into using it because of the tools that they use. And for this reasons it is the brands that are developing these tools who are of critical importance for its success.

While your most important message should be the most visually prominent, graphical elements that are too large and obvious can be ignored by visitors, especially when surrounded by too much white space. This well-documented phenomenon is called “banner blindness.” Too much visual distinction can cause the item to be perceived as an ad and ignored.

An online news property that has had success running an awareness campaign to fans of NPR, for example, might decide to scale up its approach by targeting fans of PBS as well. While this is an intuitive strategy, to do so in the spirit of diversification can be slippery: Almost 60 percent of the Facebook audiences for PBS and NPR overlap.

It’s tempting to target all your customers (or everyone else in your ecosystem). But this wont work, the interest wont be as strong. Try to create a global community for parents and you’ll fail. Try to create a community for moms in downtown Boston and you have a better chance of success.

Think there’s something missing from this list? Leave a link in a comment, or tweet me @BenLaMothe!